Fighting Fire with Fire

It may be possible to treat or even cure AIDS by turning the virus against itself:

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a genetically-engineered strain of the AIDS virus that combats other, more deadly strains.

The new anti-AIDS strain, which was developed through a genetic manipulation technique called antisense, was examined in a three-year study that ended this week. Researchers involved in the study recruited five AIDS sufferers whom had begun to fail treatment, meaning that drugs no longer contained the virus. Three years after injecting these patients with the antisense strain, four of the patients have shown restoration of their damaged immune systems, with partial suppression of the harmful HIV virus.